How to use a Chinese Yoosee/2cu IP Camera with Zoneminder on Ubuntu

This IP camera is a fairly cheap one (30-40 US$). According to the user manual it is supposed to be used with Yoosee mobile camera app to view photos remotely.But after upgrading “yoosee” the remote viewing had failed. Luckily the “2cu” app could be used to view photos remotely with out any problem  . Therefore I had to drop ” yoosee” and select  “2cu ” app for the mobile phone. As an alternative measure for  this type of unexpected problems I thought of exploring possibilities of using this camera on Zonemider .

(First I have started and connected the ip camera to the wireless router through wifi .

Then I have used “nmap -A -T4 192.168.1.*” on the terminal .
The results of nmap showed that the ip camera is connected through ip address 192.168.1.4
and the opened ports were 554  and 5000.

I tried to view the server using 192.168.1.4 :554 and 192.168.1.4:5000 but failed.)

My operating system is Ubuntu 15.10 .The Zoneminer version is v1.28.1.

First download free Xeoma app and ran to find the streaming address of the camera.

IP camera view on Xeoma ( photo at right)

From the above figure you can see that  the URLs  are  rtsp://192.168.1.4/onvif1 and rtsp://192.168.1.4/onvif2

I have used one of the above URLs to configure the monitor of  Zoneminder.

monitor of  zoneminder

I have used the Monitor Preset  of Foscam F1820 ffmpg H264 as a guidance . But used the Source path and the resolution from the Xeoma results.

IP camera view on Zoneminder( photo at left)

You can use this cost effective night vision Chinese IP camera on Zoneminder very easily.

How to use an old Android phone as an IP camera on Zoneminder

I thought of using my old of  Micromax 60 Android phone as a IP camera for Zoneminder software .When I search the internet for a software that can convert a phone to an IP camera ,I came across an interesting software called  IP Webcam.

Let us see how a phone can be used with Zoneminder.

First you will have to have a wireless router connected to the computer where the Zoneminder installed.

1.Install IP Webcam software on the phone.

2.Activate the wireless connection in the phone and connect to the wireless router.

3.Open the IP Webcam and go through the menu and activate the server.Now you can view the IP address of the phone and the port number on the screen.Write down the IP Address and the port .(my IP Address and port    192.168.1.3:8080)

4.If you enter the above IP Address  on the address bar of the computer ,you will get a screen as follows

Press here to see 192.168.1.3:8080

5. Add a monitor in the ZM-Console.

Fill the general and source sub menus as follows.

Press here for general

Press here for source 

Press here to see the ZM-Conzole

6.Restart ZM using the runnig/stop key in the ZM-Console. Now you can view video streaming on the phone on the ZM monitor .

Press here to see ZM monitor

 

Note :- The charging adopter has to be connected to phone while the IP Webcam is activated to avoid the battery runs down .There should be sufficient ventilation provided to avoid heating the phone.

More details on IP Webcam can get from here

 

 

 

How to view Zoneminder monitor remotely using ngrok

When the  Zonminder is using Apache HTTP Server , the ZM-Console address is localhost/zm. The ngrok software can be used to access the localhost of the computer where the zoneminder is installed .

First you will have to install the ngrok software on the computer where the zoneminder is installed .

Once  you run ngrok on the terminal you will get the web address for you to access the localhost remotely .

You can get ngrok from here

First ,download the ngrok zip file and extract it in to the home directory of the computer.

Then open the terminal and run the following command  to install ngrok

sudo apt-get install ngrok-client

Then run

./ngrok http 80

Now You see the ngrok terminal as follows.

Press this to see ngrok terminal

Here the web address under the forwarding will give the access to localhost:80 of your computer. Now you can use this web address to access your localhost on a remote computer .

 

Press this  to see  the result 

Now you can access the ZM-Console by adding /zm to the web address

Press this to see the ZM-Console and the Monitor

How to install ZoneMinder, v1.28.1. on Ubuntu 15.10

When you upgrade Zoneminder to v1.28.1. the ZM – Console will stuck  due to a data base error.It is also noticed that the sound folder is missing at /usr/share/zoneminder/www/ .

Let us see how those errors mentioned are rectified.

Open the Ubuntu terminal and run the following commands

Step 1: Make sure we add the correct packages

sudo  add-apt-repository ppa:iconnor/zoneminder-master
sudo apt-get update

if you don’t have mysql already installed:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server 

Step 2: Install ZoneMinder

sudo apt-get install zoneminder

Step 3: Configuring  the Database

mysql < /usr/share/zoneminder/db/zm_create.sql

mysql -e "grant select,insert,update,delete,create on zm.* to 'zmuser'@localhost identified by 'zmpass';"

Step 4:

Set permissions of /etc/zm/zm.conf to root:www-data 740

chmod 740 /etc/zm/zm.conf

chown root:www-data /etc/zm/zm.conf

Enable Zoneminder service to start at boot

systemctl enable zoneminder.service

Create a new user

adduser www-data video

Start Zoneminder

systemctl start zoneminder.service

Check to see that Zoneminder is running

systemctl status zoneminder.service

Enable CGI and Zoneminder configuration in Apache.

a2enmod cgi

a2enmod rewrite

a2enconf zoneminder

Step 5:

Restart Apache

service apache2 restart

If the apache server does not start for above command please see the foot Note

Download cambozola tar.gz file from the following link and extract it to the home folder 

http://www.charliemouse.com/code/cambozola/

Then open the terminal and execute
sudo cp cambozola-0.936/dist/cambozola.jar /usr/share/zoneminder/www/

Then open the web browser http://localhost/zm/

How to make alarm sounds

The sound folder is missing at the /usr/share/zoneminder/www/ sub directory. Therefore you will have to create it manually.

First you will have to select a suitable sound clip and copy it to the home directory of your computer.

Let us say our sound clip is alarm.ogg

Open the Ubuntu terminal

cd /usr/share/zoneminder/www/

sudo mkdir sounds

cd sounds

sudo sudo cp /home/bkjaya1952/alarm.ogg /usr/share/zoneminder/www/sounds/

Now open the ZM- Console and add a Modect

Open the Options / Web of the ZM- Console

and tick WEB_SOUND_ON_ALARM

enter alarm.ogg at the cage facing  WEB_ALARM_SOUND

Now the alarm sound will be  activated once an alarm is occurred.

Note :-Some web browsers like Firefox at present does not work on above alarms.Chromium web browser can be used successfully .

Reference http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Ubuntu_Server_15.10_64-bit_with_Zoneminder_1.28.1_the_easy_way
 
Note:-

If an error massage of

“AH00526: Syntax error on line 11 of /etc/apache2/conf-enabled/zoneminder.conf:

Invalid command ‘php_flag’, perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration”

occurred when you try to start apache , please install the following software.

Open the terminal and run

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5

sudo a2enmod php5

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

How to change the default port 80

Suppose ,you want to change the localhost default port to 80 to 8080

Open the terminal and run

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/ports.conf

Then the file port.conf file will be opened

In the file change the Listen 80 to Listen 8080 and save

Similarly open the file 000-default.conf by running

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

and change  <VirtualHost *:80> to <VirtualHost *:8080> and save

The run

sudo service apache2 restart

Now you can access zm console using  http://localhost:8080/zm/

How to install Zoneminder 1.28.2 on Ubuntu 15.04

Open the terminal and execute following commends

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Restart Apache

sudo service apache2 restart

Add Zoneminder Repository

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:iconnor/zoneminder

sudo apt-get update

Install Zoneminder

sudo apt-get install zoneminder

Create a file called zoneminder.conf

sudo gedit /etc/tmpfiles.d/zoneminder.conf

Paste or enter the following to above file

d /var/run/zm 0755 www-data www-data

Then save the file

Change permissions on the file

sudo chmod 755 /etc/tmpfiles.d/zoneminder.conf

Create a symbolic link

sudo ln -s /etc/zm/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf-enabled/zoneminder.conf

Create a new user

sudo adduser www-data video

Restart Apache

sudo service apache2 restart

Download cambozola tar.gz file from the following link  and extract it to the home folder 
http://www.charliemouse.com/code/cambozola/

Then open the terminal and execute
sudo cp cambozola-0.936/dist/cambozola.jar /usr/share/zoneminder

Then open the web browser http://localhost/zm/

Now you can add monitor and make your webcam a cctv camera .
If the camera doesn't work restart zoneminder using the start/stop button at the top 
of ZM -Console.

Reference http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Ubuntu_Server_15.04_64-bit_with_Zoneminder_1.28.1_the_easy_way

Note:-
It is better to uninstall previously installed zoneminder completely using  
Synaptic Package Manager.
This procedure does not delete files in zonemider folder at /usr/share/
To remove it, open the terminal and enter
cd /usr/share/zoneminder
then 
enter sudo rm *.*
 

A simple method to make Zoneminder alarm events remotely viewable using Dropbox syncing (Ubuntu 14.04/Mint 17)

First of all a Dropbox Sync folder has to be created on your computer where the zoneminder  surveillance system has been installed .The method is discribed in this link HERE

After installing Dropbox on your computer using the above method ,a sync folder called “dropbox ” is created on the home directory of your computer.

Now we are going to get a link of zoneminder events and copy to dropbox folder so that you can view events live on the Dropbox cloud.

The alarm events of zoneminder are stored in the folder at  /var/cache/zoneminder/events

If you right click the mouse on events folder and try to  create  a link ,you can see it is not allowed .

If you use synaptics packge manager to find  where the zoneminder files in your computer , you can see  another events file in /usr/share/zoneminder.

(It is a  folder linked to /var/cache/zoneminder/events)

Copy the events file at /usr/share/zoneminder to the dropbox folder at the home dirctory.

(just copy and paste)

Since this events folder is link to /var/cache/zoneminder/events ,all the zoneminder events are updated lively.

Start the dropbox and zoneminder

Now you can see all the events are uploaded lively to the Dropbox cloud so that you can view the alarm images and videos remoteley .

(Note:-Using teamviewer software also you can control zoneminder and view events)

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How to solve the Problem of video generation of events from filters in Zoneminder 1.26.5 on Ubuntu 14.04/Mint 17

The Zoneminder 1.26.5 software has been designed to use ffmpeg for video generation purpose.But latest Ubuntu 14.04 and Mint use avconv instead of ffmpeg. Since the Zoneminder software is not so user friendly ,I  had  to find a correct way of using avconv by trail and error method.

Let us examine how to fill the data in  Zoneminder Console /Options/Images

In the previous versions of Zoneminder /Ubuntu combination , for the “Path to (optional) ffmpeg mpeg encoder (?)” we had to give the full path /usr/bin/ffmpeg.

But for the Zoneminder 1.26.5 the full path is not required .

We can see avconv is available in /usr/bin/

Therefore in the Value cage enter avconv

 

Now we will have to find whether the method adopted is facilitating to make  videos out of the images . This can be tested by uploading the results to a ftp server.

Here I have selected free account of filegenie file server

Now go to Zoneminder Console /Options/Upload

Fill the value cages as follows

Should ZoneMinder support uploading events from filters (?) -tick the value box

What protocol to use to upload events (?) -ftp

The remote server to upload events to (?)- ftp.filegenie.com

Remote server username (?) your user name in filegenie

Remote server password (?) your password in filegenie

The remote directory to upload to (?) zm

(Note :- In filegenie I have initially creared a folder zm)

Making a filter to activate conditions for making videos and uploading .

Using the filter button zoneminder console make a filter with following conditions

max Score > or =  20 (you will have to chose the value according to the value you used in the monitor)

Then tick the boxes in Create video for all matches and Upload the matches

Then save the filter and execute.

Now if you press the log button in the zoneminder console ,you can see uploading video files to the file server.